by Jason Snell
Google Assistant crosses openness off its list
Jason Marr, developer of the excellent AnyList app I’ve used for shopping lists for years:
Google is shutting down the Google Assistant Notes & Lists integration for non-Google apps on June 20, 2023. Unfortunately, this means that beginning June 20, it will no longer be possible to use Google Assistant to add items to AnyList. We know many of our customers rely on AnyList’s integration with Google Assistant and that the loss of this feature is frustrating and disappointing.
This decision by Google to kill third-party app integration in favor of Google Keep means that my Nest Home Hub just became a whole lot less useful. Going forward, I guess I’ll try to use Siri for this purpose. The key phrase is, “Hey Siri, add apples to my grocery list in AnyList.”
It’s a mouthful, but I don’t have a lot of great options here. Well done, Google, in wrecking the utility of your own little kitchen gadget.
Update: After talking to many AnyList users, it seems like the best way forward is to share a shared AnyList list with Reminders, and share that Reminders list with your shared AnyList participants via iCloud. At that point, you can add items to the shopping list by saying “Hey Siri, put x on my shopping list,” which will add it to Reminders. The next time anyone who is using the shared Reminders list launches AnyList (say, at the grocery store), all items in the list will sync.